A name both familiar and unfamiliar leaped out at him.
"Who's this Venus Mango?" he asked his secretary.
"CNN reporter."
"Is she cute?"
"Depends on your taste."
"Is she up and coming?"
"Yes."
"Tell her we're on."
Venus Mango was in fact what Pagan liked to call a heavenly body. And she was science editor for CNN.
She knew the Crab Nebula from the Trifid, and recognized over fifty other Messier objects. That made them compatible in Cosmo Pagan's eyes.
Dr. Pagan invited her to dinner after the interview. Of course, she accepted. Who wouldn't say yes to the famous boyish face, the erudite manner and easily tousled hair?
"Marry me," Cosmo asked in the middle of dessert, a red Jell-O dome with black-licorice decorations that Cosmo called Martian Moon Jelly.
"What!"
"I love you, Venus."
"You say 'Venus' as if you've been saying it all your life."
"Marry me and I promise to have an asteroid named after you," Cosmo promised.
The future Venus Pagan said yes in the second hour of their first date. They were married by the weekend, and Cosmo Pagan proudly showed her the documentation on their honeymoon at China's Purple Mountain Observatory by the light of a nifty lunar eclipse.
"Why is this dated ten years ago?" Venus asked.
"I had a premonition."
Venus Pagan wept openly. "This is the most amazing thing any man has ever done for me."
"Wait'll you experience the galactic orgasm."
Venus Pagan in truth didn't so much advance Cosmo Pagan's career as she maintained it. Cosmo decided to settle for that. He wasn't a spring chicken anymore. There was an actual worry line seaming his high forehead now. Fortunately on-camera makeup shielded his adoring public from the unnerving sight.
Besides, how high could an astronomer go?
For the first time in his life, Cosmo Pagan was content to settle down for the easy ride.
This year was turning out to be a comet year. Hayakute II. Then Hale-Bopp. The public lapped it up, and Dr. Pagan was only too happy to feed their curiosity.
So when the BioBubble burst, it was just another cosmic event engineered to further that career, and a break from explaining the Oort Cloud for the gazillionth time.
The phone began ringing off the hook immediately. Of course, the first call he returned was Venus's. Cosmo was no fool. Where was he going to find another earthbound Venus who could do anything for his career?
By the next morning, he was quoted in virtually every newspaper and TV news program in the nation and beyond.
This time he discovered they played it for laughs.
" 'Someone up there doesn't like us'?" he sputtered, reading back his own quote. "Everyone used that comment! It was a throwaway. I gave a detailed, reasoned, poetic analysis, and they print a side-of-the-mouth attempt at levity?"
"You gave a windy speech to a TV camera," Venus returned. "You know better. All TV wants is soundbites."
"I'm used to having a forum," Cosmo lamented. "And editorial control."
"Not this time, honey. Get over it."
But Dr. Cosmo Pagan wasn't about to get over it. Twenty-five years of popularizing astronomy and the heavens had made him famous from Anchorage to Asia, but one last honor still eluded him.
Respect from his fellow astronomers. They hated him to a man.
"I have to do something about this," he fumed.
"Why bother? The story has a half life of maybe three days."
"I'm going to the BioBubble."
"I won't recommend being tied to this one. The BioBubble is a joke. You said so yourself."
"That was when it first started. I've since changed my mind," he growled.
"Suit yourself."
And Dr. Pagan did. He drove his Mars red Saturn with the license plate that read BARSOOM-1 to the Martian-like landscape of Dodona, Arizona, and stole the spotlight out from under the BioBubble people.
By the time he had returned home, the ink was drying on the print-media story.
" 'Dr. Pagan says Martians crushed BioBubble!'" he screamed. "I never said that!"
"I saw it on CNN," Venus said. "You came darn close."
"I said visitors from outer space. I was being poetic. By 'visitor,' I meant an asteroid or meteor. Not little green men!"
"Nobody says 'little green men' anymore. They say 'grays' now."
"I don't believe in that UFO conspiracy crap."
"You don't believe in the current shuttle program, either."
"Listen, there's an entire cosmos out there I'll never get to explore at the current technological rate. We went to the moon. It was a dusty rock. Big deal. The next logical step is Mars. But do we take it? No. We just send these stupid space trucks into low Earth orbit and bring them back. I'd rather see deep-space probes, sending back images that I can see in this lifetime. Screw the shuttle. They won't get to Mars until after they sprinkle my ashes in Tunguska."
"You said visitors. They took you literally. Relax. By the time Hale-Bopp comes back, this will all be forgotten."
Dr. Cosmo Pagan screamed like a cow in distress. "I'm going to be pilloried by every astronomy society on the planet. And beyond."
"Poor baby," Venus II said, hugging him tightly. "Look at it this way-at least you still have me. And we'll orbit the sun until the end of time."
"I need some face time."
"I need some suck-face time," his wife returned, pinching his boyish cheek.
Cosmo considered this. "Trade?"
"Throw in a galactic orgasm. I haven't had one in moons."
"That's going to take all night, knowing you."
"What will a few hours' delay cost you?" Venus said, giving his hair a muss and starting to pop his shirt buttons with her strong white teeth.
Chapter 11
On a beach in Cancun, a pale man in a Speedo bathing suit lounged on a candy-cane folding beach chair as turquoise waves creamed against the pristine sands. Unfolding his laptop, he booted up his system and began typing. To: R From: RM@qnm.com Subject: Current project status. Update, please. The reply took twenty minutes, even by e-mail. In that time, his skin began to burn. And remembering how fragile the ozone shield had gotten in the past eleven years, he applied supersunblock to every exposed area. He smeared his forearms as he read.
To: RM@qnm.com From: R Subject: Update No feedback from corporate. Media currently ascribing event to space aliens. Specifically Martians determined to nip planned NASA Mars colony in the bud.
The fingers, greasy with sunblock, pecked out a response.
To: R From: RM@qnm.com Subject: Update Sounds good. Go with it.
The reply came back almost instantly through the miracle of orbiting communications satellites: "What do you mean, go with it?"
Greasy fingers went to work: "Encourage media's thinking."
The reply: "How?"
To which, the greasy fingers typed: "That's your job. If you can't do it, I'll find someone who can."
A long time-by information-age standards-passed before the next e-mail appeared on the laptop screen. Actually it was only twelve minutes.
To: RM@qnm.com From: R Subject: Directive What about legal ramifications?
The man on the beach snapped out an impatient response:
To: R From: RM@qnm.com Subject: Re: Directive You're protected by the corporate shield. Do what's best for the corporation.
There was no response to that, and the pale hands powered down the laptop, folded it up and went back to enjoying vacation.
After a while, the pale man on the beach threw on a gaudy Hawaiian shirt. With all that UV radiation pouring down from the sky, there was no sense in taking chances. Basal-cell skin-cancer rates over the last decade had skyrocketed higher than the stock market.
Chapter 12
Somewhere over the Ozarks, Remo Williams leafed through a newspaper.
"It says here that Hale-Bopp was last seen three thousand years ago."